Ask HN: What motivates hackers to hack things?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36769843

by Quinzel • 3 years ago

4 11 3 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I’m currently studying security, and decided to focus my efforts on the psychology of cybersecurity.

I realise hacking is just one aspect of that, but I was curious, what motivates hackers to hack things?

stop50• 3 years ago

Money, fun, fame. In this order

happytiger• 3 years ago

And lulz. So important.

throwawayadvsec• 3 years ago

Also geopolitical interests, revenge, spite, hate.

kidgorgeous• 3 years ago

solving puzzles. instead of wasting time on sudoku, i can at least spend my time on something that can bring me money, fun, and fame

thorin• 3 years ago

Boredom probably. When I was young and bored I used to mess with all kinds of things. Now there are a lot of distractions so I don't both much with playing around with technology.

zarathustra333• 3 years ago

The power of the online communities you are in cant be understated. If you are hanging around with other hackers in discords,skypes you are naturally going to gravitate towards those activities. I would look into these subcultures. Happy to be of help if you want to talk further.

muzani• 3 years ago

Mostly curiosity. Have you read Kevin Mitnick's books? Many hackers start from magic tricks. Magic is basically exploiting a glitch in people's attention. It doesn't seem like it works, and it's fascinating how consistent you can get it.

Social engineering is an extension of this. People make the same mistakes consistently. So many people believe that correct horse battery staple trick, and there's even a generator for it that you can utilise it for dictionary attacks. Many people use root or admin as their login. But how many?

There's a trick I did once in a game, where there were preset images in a dropdown. These images would actually point to a url and pass that to the server. But you could inspect element and type whatever URL you like. This trick is fun the first time, but every time I see this pattern, I try to see if it works.

vmoore• 3 years ago

the psychology of cybersecurity

Nick Espinosa's talk: 'The five laws of cybersecurity' is a must view if you want a baseline understanding of cybersecurity.

Basically if something's vulnerable, it will be hacked: no exceptions. What motivates someone to hack? It used to be for the lolz, now people are submitting bug bounties to zero-day brokers. The landscape has changed. People don't hack for free anymore.

https://www.ted.com/talks/nick_espinosa_the_five_laws_of_cyb...

Quinzel2• 3 years ago

Thank you for this :)

mikewarot• 3 years ago

Mostly I enjoy figuring out how things work. I have a friend with declining health who has been repairing things since his youth in the 1950s. He always wanted an atomic clock, we ended up fixing several. There can be quite a bit of improvisation and hacking in the repair process.

Quinzel2• 3 years ago

That's really cool!

Ask HN: What motivates hackers to hack things?

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